Show Notes
How does mindfulness fit with CBT? And is it all about sitting about on a yoga mat? (spoiler - it's not). This episode delves into Mindfulness Based Therapies, including Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Prof. Willem Kuyken and Chris Henry speak to Dr Lucy Maddox. Show Notes and Transcript: Podcast episode produced by Dr Lucy Maddox for BABCP If you're interested in finding out more... Books This is book that Willem mentions in the podcast and it comes with a CD of meditations: Williams, M., & Penman, D. (2011). Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world. Hachette UK. These books are also good: Teasdale, J. D., Williams, J. M. G., & Segal, Z. V. (2014). The mindful way workbook: An 8-week program to free yourself from depression and emotional distress. Guilford Publications. Segal, Z. V., Williams, M., & Teasdale, J. D. (2018). Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression. Guilford Publications. Websites Headspace has lots of animations about mindfulness and an app you can download to your phone (they do a free trial so you can see if you like it). https://www.headspace.com/ This organisation are bringing mindfulness to schools with several specially devised programs: https://mindfulnessinschools.org/ Here is the organisation that Willem works at: http://oxfordmindfulness.org/ And in particular this page has lots of resources you can access for free: http://oxfordmindfulness.org/for-you/ British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies website is here: https://www.babcp.com/ Transcript
Willem: Mindfulness is a human capacity that we all have in any moment of our life. So, in that sense, anybody can do it anywhere and anytime. There's no particular person or particular way of doing mindfulness. It's a way of meeting our minds, meeting our experience, meeting our world in a different way.
Chris: If I'm anxious, at my wit's end, worried about things, then the one thing that I'm absolutely not is balanced or on an even keel, as it were. And the amazing thing is that that kind of pressure of stress and feeling there's no way out or no light at the end of the tunnel, in a worst scenario...
Whenever I have practised mindfulness meditation, if I've been feeling a bit troubled or a bit down or, on occasion, very, very worried about something, invariably I always feel better afterwards.
Lucy: This is Let's Talk about CBT and I'm Dr Lucy Maddox. This series of podcasts, brought to you by the BABCP, explores cognitive behavioural therapy or CBT. What it is, what it's not and how it can be useful.
Today, we're thinking about mindfulness-based therapies. These are some of the wider family of CBTs or cognitive behavioural therapies. I'll be talking to Willem Kuyken and Chris Henry about mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. I met Willem in Oxford and asked how he would describe mindfulness.
Willem: There's a short answer to that, which is that mindfulness is a capacity that we all have to bring a certain kind of awareness to our experience. An awareness that has curiosity, interest and care.
A longer answer is that mindfulness is something that has three different elements to it. It's the 'what?' Our attention and our awareness. The 'how?' That is cultivating a certain mode of mind, if you like. A certain way of thinking. Of meeting our experience,
meeting our world, with curiosity, kindness, care, equanimity and patience. We're not just reacting to the world, we're actually meeting the world in a very particular way. Meeting our experience in a very particular way.
Then I think the third part of it is the 'why?' Why are we doing this? It's not just for fun or just for no good reason. In the case of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression, it's to help people with a very long history of depression begin to see the patterns of thinking, the patte
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